Midnight Archipelago
by Micah the Prophyt
Summary: A collection of islands deep underground, hidden from the light of the sun, where the inhabitants all use magic and worship the Witch Queen, elder sister to the Harvest Goddess...
1. Chapter 1  The Beginning

Midnight Archipelago

Part One – The Beginning

In the beginning…

…there was only _darkness_.

Now, this _darkness_ was not **evil** in any sense of the word…

This _darkness_ was merely the absence of _light_…

The Creator, with his daughters, called into being everything: planets, air, and breathed life into clay. After this, the Creator rested…

In the _darkness_, magic ruled over all - life and death; animals, plants, and humans; earth, sea, fire, and sky. And over them all ruled the Witch Queen: goddess of the Long Night, matron of Winter, and eldest among the Creator's daughters. Humanity gladly worshipped her as a just goddess, giving her what offerings they could from the darkness and cold, even though she did not create them…

The Witch Queen had many younger sisters, chief among them the Harvest Goddess. It was she who lifted the first man and woman up from the dirt and gave them the imagination and means to shape the earth into a hospitable place. The Witch Queen, being pleased with her sister's creation, gave humanity the gift of magic. Thus it was her voice the humans first heard and understood, though the Harvest Goddess had been the first to call them…

Over time, though she respected her sister as Queen of the earth, the Harvest Goddess came to realize that much of humanity suffered in the _darkness_. And so, in secret, she created the first star, the Sun, and coaxed forth the first _light_. Thus dawned the first ever morning of the first ever Spring…

Thinking this new _light_ as a gift from the Witch Queen, most of humanity rejoiced and began to reshape their settlements into what they deemed as beautiful, not with magic – the Queen's gift – but with tools – gifts of the Harvest Goddess. Many other humans, however, though smaller in number than the others, knew the light as not of their Mistress. They retreated from the rest of humanity, remaining ever-faithful to magic and the Queen, creating new lands away from _light_…

Pleased with her gift to the world, the Harvest Goddess eagerly went to her sister, the Queen, to present her with the gift of joyous praise that came from the world. The Witch Queen, who had ruled in the _darkness_ for countless millennia, could not look at the _light_ for fear it would hurt her. But, she did gaze upon humanity, prepared to accept their praise. For some reason, she felt herself grow weaker, not stronger. The Queen then turned on her sister, enraged to discover that humanity had begun to worship the Harvest Goddess instead as the giver of _light_…

Oblivious to her sister's anger and the source of her newfound power, the Harvest Goddess continued to assist humanity, even creating a race of helper-creatures – the Harvest Sprites – to further assist the farmers and ranchers of the world, by far her favorite and most faithful followers. The Harvest Goddess, powered by light, greenery, and praise, began to change shape: her hair changing to the color of vast, ripe fields, and her eyes shimmering like deep pools of enchanted water. The humans who worshipped her also began to change, no longer conformed to a single shape; they evolved and adopted appearances as countless as the grains of sand on the beaches of the world. And it is even said that once every lifetime, the Harvest Goddess herself descends to live among humanity and take a mate…

On her throne, the Witch Queen grew ever more jealous and resentful of her younger sister's power. Despite all this, what she considered complete betrayal, she still loved her faithful servants dearly. Unchanging in their ways, they changed little over the centuries of their self-imposed exile: all were pale of skin. Most had hair as pale as the moon or dark as a cloud-filled night sky. And all had eyes of crimson. Considering they continued to worship their Queen with magic, the Witch Queen also changed very little, though her hair became as the color of rich amethyst and her eyes like faerie fire. As her servants continued to struggle in their new home, she too, taking an idea from her sister, created the Imps – not-unpleasant, though trickster creatures – to learn the ways of her sister's people and use them to aid her own. Once a century, at the apex of her power in Winter, the Witch Queen descends to live among her people and find a suitable mate. Only once has she given birth: to a baby girl, who on her eighteenth birthday ran away from home and came to live among the people of _light_…

Learning of this, an even greater betrayal, the Witch Queen descended from her throne in a terrible rage and lay waste to the Sunshine Islands in her search for the Witch Princess. The Harvest Goddess knew she had to protect her people, even if one of them was the daughter of her beloved sister. Gathering all her power on the day of the Harvest Festival, she cast her sister down from her realm and planted a seed over the place where the Witch Princess had risen from the _darkness_. On that day, the Harvest Goddess wept, bringing the first true rains to the earth…

Centuries have come and gone since that terrible day, and still the Harvest Goddess weeps for her lost sister. The Sunshine Islands have risen from their graves under the ocean and are inhabited once more. Over time, the Witch Queen has even come to see the error of her ways and desperately wishes to live in harmony with her sister once more, but in her greatly-weakened state, she is unable to do anything more than call a short Winter to the earth once per year to communicate with the Harvest Goddess…

The Queen's people still live on their islands in the _darkness_, which sit on an underground sea in a great cave, illuminated by purple faerie fire and luminous fungi. This is their story, the story of the Midnight Archipelago…


	2. Chapter 2  The Newcomer

Midnight Archipelago – Part Two

The Newcomer

When he stepped off the little motor boat onto the dock at Sunshine Islands, he immediately thought that it was perfect. "I think I could really spend the rest of my life here," he said to himself as he lifted his light rucksack onto his shoulder.

Several days earlier, the young man, brown of hair and green of eye, has received a final notice that he could willingly accept payment for his farmland from the big corporation on the mainland, or he would be forcibly removed with no compensation. And, since the lawyers and law enforcement were all in the corporation's pocket, he decided to take the money and go. Four generations of his family had been born, lived happily, and died on that beautiful farm, but he knew a futile cause when he saw one. He sighed. Everyone else in town had accepted similar offers from the company long before he had. He was the last to go. To ship his crops out, he had been forced to travel nearly half a day to the next town over towards the end.

Now, here he stood on a bright, sunny shore, rucksack only carrying his tools and an overabundance of cash. As he approached the town, he heard the hustle and bustle of daily activity. "Maybe I'll introduce myself later," he thought. "For now, I think I'll explore the forest."

The young man had always preferred the forested areas around his farm back home to the town, but he did make the required trips into town for festivals. Once within the first barrier of trees, the town's noise died away, replaced with the sounds of birds singing to one another, mammals rifling through the undergrowth, and water running nearby. The further in the forest he travelled, the darker the sky seemed to get. He looked up. "That's odd," he mused aloud. "The sky is clear and it's not past midday yet."

Turning a bit, he suddenly noticed the cause of the darkness. He was standing in the shade of an enormous tree. It had to be nearly five hundred feet tall, if not more. He pushed through the undergrowth and a rather stubborn stand of bamboo to gaze fully upon this wonder of nature. For several hundred yards around the base of the tree the ground was bare but for some small patches of grass – scraggly, but healthy and green from what he could tell. The massive above-ground roots of the mammoth perennial arched all over, the largest of which being at least twice as big around as an overweight dairy cow.

He stepped over a few smaller roots in his path when he heard sobbing then a terrified scream, which seemed to rapidly fade away. "Hold on!" he cried, rushing in the direction he thought he heard the scream coming from. Suddenly, a root snagged his foot, and he plunged headlong into a jagged hole beneath the arch of a larger root and he knew no more…

Cool water whirled slowly around his head at shoulders…

Distant voices called to one another in alarmed shouts…

"MAMA!" a child's voice yelled, rather close. "There's another one over here! I think it's a boy!"

Running feet slapped on wet sand louder and louder, rapidly approaching. The young man groaned and opened his eyes. _Oh Goddess_, he thought, horrified, _I'm blind_.

He turned his head slowly, wincing at the pain throbbing throughout. Several pairs of glowing red lights bobbed around above his head. A dimmer pair of lights came closer and he heard an elderly female voice. "Can you hear me, young man?"

He started to nod, but the pain was unbearable, so he replied instead. "I-I think so…I have a bad headache though…"

The pale red lights bobbed once, and he felt warm ceramic pressed to his lips. "Drink this for the pain."

He took a few sips, immediately feeling less pain. "Th-thank you," he said, slowly sitting up. Gradually, his eyesight began to adjust to a very, very dim purple glow in the distance. The glowing red lights appeared to be luminous eyes set on pale, concerned faces. "Where am I?" he whispered.

The elderly woman who had given him the elixir smiled softly. "You and the girl are lucky to have fallen so far and not perished, Sunshiner," she said, sadness tingeing her voice. "I am the town doctor, Thericia. And welcome to the Midnight Archipelago, domain of the Witch Queen…"


End file.
